I don’t think we’ll know for sure till the deal is done or he’s gone (given the A-Rod and Manny drama, it seems likely they’ll at least try moving him sometime in the ’10s),

YEP. I was beginning to think Soriano would be the guy who just never gives up his no-trade clause. I don’t he wanted to at the end, and I think it was underreported how Theo & Jed pretty much told him he’d be benched if he stayed any longer. That probably wouldn’t have gone over too well – manager is okay with developing but wants to win to show progress – so it’s best it didn’t happen no matter how much money it took.

The deal [is] a high percentage of the payroll and he probably won’t produce at a level where it’s an even bargain…but if he contributes towards a World Series win (or, gasp, multiple ones!), then everyone will be fine with whatever he’s getting paid. At least for a year, anyway.

multiple world series. NOPE.

The FanGraphs number WAR calculation was highly quoted as proof Soriano was actually worth his contract after all. Some of that is fair, some of that are contract prices going way up…and some of that is goofy UZR ratings giving Soriano much more credit for defense in his first five seasons with the Cubs than he should’ve gotten. You can only tell the story about Soriano getting much better the last two years if you acknowledge how bad he was to previously, and those Fangraph value numbers have Soriano as a better defender than hitter in his first two seasons. That’s not what I remember seeing.

Soriano had the misfortune to have his big dropoff season the same time the team did. He was hurting the team, but he wasn’t the only one and it took him until the last couple years to shed that. It was still an overly optimistic deal, made hoping they could pay a good player into being a great player, like a lot of Cubs free agency signings at that time.

This is a smart baseball move. Volstad is worth the gamble; the Cubs are going to be making a lot of those types of gambles to see who is worth keeping around when (if!) the next wave of competitive rolls thru, and it seems a decent use of otherwise useless innings. Either Zambrano will pitch well in 2012 and be out of the Cubs price range, or he’ll pitch bad and not worth signing. It’s also a great offering to the Cubs base, who have bought in to the idea of a ‘necessary culture change’ to the point the right amount of subtractions is worth more than any additions.

It also breaks my heart. We’re now five seasons away from when Z was really Z. He had the biggest win total in 2007, but the hits per 9 jumped that year and have never gone down again. He’s not been the guy you’d go out of your way to see every time he starts since, but he still usually put together one really strong stretch every year, usually right before or after a blow up. He still is out there trying (except for those meltdowns), it’s his arm started going out on way too early. Prior and Wood will be remembered as the arms the Cubs (possibly) mangled via overuse at a young age, but Zambrano was throwing 200 IP at 22 and 23 and 24 with them, and maybe it just took a little bit longer for it to catch up to him. Prior’s pitied for his his failed career, Wood is respected for battling thru his arm problems, but people seem to just blame Carlos for the same problems. Mostly because he’s made himself such an easy target.

It’s sad it ended like this. It’s depressing that it’s the second franchise guy who’s left on such terrible terms in a decade. Maybe Carlos will be welcomed back to the family before Sammy – Carlos is always willing to admit his mistakes (just not stop making them) and perhaps he’ll be a calmly guy when he’s no longer competing – but it’ll be years down the line. Zambrano acted like a jerk, but I’d wish he’d also be remembered for being the best player on the team and easily the most entertaining for the last decade.

I understand why he had to go, but I wish people remember why we were happy to have him here.

things that are actually really good:
– the pitching! Probably four above average starters and possibly the best 7-8-9 bullpen in the league.
– the lack of injuries (only Angel Guzman, and that was an issue from last year, and no one even counts him any more because it’ll be a miracle if he makes it back)
– the Brewers and the Cardinals having very important injuries
– Carlos Silva will never be a Cub again. SUNK COSTS, hooray.
– a manager who might do some actual platooning

things that are worrisome
– 2B may be an offensive black hole.
– they’re writing “now that Soriano is healthy, he’s going to hit!” articles for the fourth year in a row
– there’s almost no depth on this team; if Ram, Soto or Pena get significantly hurt, the season is over, and you might be able to throw Byrd and Castro in that group
– there’s no hitting coming off that bench. Colvin/Fukudome is the big bat off the bench, with Koskue (& Baker) only helpful in the right situation. Reed is not much. DeWitt almost played his way off this team. Koyie Hill is awful. If there was ever a team that could use a Houffpair/Fox type as a designed pinch hitter, it’d be this team (taking the place of DeWitt, who has no purpose here.)
– at least three guys – Grabow, Samardzija, DeWitt – probably don’t make the team if they weren’t already being paid decently for this year. If one turns out, it’s a big win.

things that have totally suprised me
– the many publications who have the NL Central as a four team race. Usually a bad four team race, usally with the Cubs 4th, btu somehow the Cubs haev gained ground mostly on everyone else being worse.

I really don’t understand it. Even with a bounce back year from Ram, a better bullpen and better results for guys like Wells, this seems a below average team without a strong offensive identity. Last year, I had the team at 80. They won 75. I’ll guess the recovery gets them back to 80, but this doens’t seem like a playoff team without multiple people having breakout years and it doesn’t feel like that’ll happen.

Last year, I had a feeling of dread, of the bottom falling out on this run. I don’t have that this year, but it hasn’t been replaced by any excitement. It’s a team. They’re going to play 162 games, that’s the only part I feel confident about.

The Cubs can, and probably will, fill any rotation hole and most of the bullpen from the minors. They’ve got the guys to try, and they can use the money saved from Lilly elsewhere (needed to improve positions, most likely eating a salary.) Signing one vet for the pen would not be a surprise.

They have the replacement for RF, and finding a new home for Fukudome might be priority #1 for whomever is the GM next year. (I presume Zambrano will be either settled this year, or proved unmovable for anyone and be put on the back burner.)

The Cubs do not have a major league caliber replacement for 1B or 2B. They could bring back Lee and keep Theriot, but both would almost certainly command more than what they’ll produce, and there’s going to be great pressure to shake things up. The big problem is the guys the fans generally like (Theriot, Lee, Lilly) are the easiest to move away from to get to that change. This will not go well.

Yep. I don’t remember what projections I was looking at; there are many out by now, and I’ve looked at a lot of them. Which ever one it was (the one that was a sum of many projections, run many times?), they pegged the Cubs for about 83 wins, with a range of 72-90. That’s exactly where I’d have them based on this roster. They’re low 80s with a 10 game swing either way. It’s a fault of management to be that low, but at least there’s a chance.

The more I think about it, the less concerned I am about the inexperience of the bullpen. If you believe the vast majority of bullpen arms are unpredictable and unreliable from season to season – which I do, because otherwise they wouldn’t be bullpen pitchers – then you might as well go cheap and promising with it than expensive and flawed. There are going to be some games blown because the rookies blow a lead, and it will be the roster mistake which will get Hendry in the most trouble (because there’s nothing more dramatic than a game lost you should’ve won), but it’s hardly the worst thing here. This is a sounder move than 2010’s Scott Eyre and Bobby Howry.

Making decisions on 40 ABs in spring training is a great way to screw yourself up, but if everyone believes Tyler Colvin’s true upside is major league fourth outfielder, what’s so horrible about using him in that role?

Xavier Nady playing outfield despite being unable to throw the ball is the underplayed story of the season. Really, he shouldn’t be doing anything more than pinch hitting, but they’re making noise as if he’s going to actually start and platoon with Fukudome a little bit. Runners taking extra bases are going to get old quick.

This team kinda shifted to the back of my mind the last couple weeks, but I’m exicited to get this started now (and kinda disappointed I didn’t figure out a way to join a fantasy league I wouldn’t hate.) Maybe it’s the 80 degree weather that’s making it feel like baseball should already be here – probably won’t feel it quite the same in a couple weeks when it’s freezing again.

So, it’s much later than I wanted to do this. If I wait much longer, I’ll forget the 5% I still remember I wanted to say.

Phoenix was nice. I don’t know if it even got to 70 degrees during the weekend I was there, but it felt like 90 from where I was coming from. It looked a lot different. Lots of empty areas; where as here, those empty areas tend to be places where someone had plans to build something and gave up half way thru, Arizona is a lot of subdivisions of empty houses next to tracts of untouched grass and not much else. Not a lot of grass though. You leave a lot of land unattended to here, and the weeds are taller than people by the time it’s cold. Phoenix grass is low to the ground and sparse.

The grass still is green, and so is the cacti, and so is just about nothing else. Where they’ve given up on grass, they’ve replaced it with rock and and sand, and the people designing houses and others buildings are a bit too attached to theme. The color palette seems to range from light sand all the way up dark sand. It was explained to me that the cactus are often secured to the ground to prevent people from stealing them, and it didn’t make much sense to me at the time why you’d want to steal something as painful to transport as a cactus. A few days later, I decided the people must desperately want a non-sand colored object in our life.

The spring training ballparks all seemed on the nicer side for what are essentially minor league parks. Besides Ho Ho Kam, we stopped by Tempe Diablo Stadium (home of insanely expensive concessions) and Peoria Stadium (a nice new two team facility, even if it does have a surprisingly small and generic gift shop), and went by a great majority of the other ones. I think, of all of them they saw, Ho Ho Kam looked the least modern. It definitely felt like they were desperately trying to squeeze as many seats as possible and had run of room for more. The extra grandstand extensions most of all looked ill fitting, like they were in such a hurry to get more seats than they didn’t have time to make it look good.

The Cubs played Arizona the first day, an exciting 8-7 comeback win. I left my camera in my luggage for that. Besides the backups making an inspired really to win, the highlight was Justin Upton crushing a ball to left field for a grand slam, the ball connecting near the top of the scoreboard.

I did take photos the next day (including at the SEA/SD building), when the White Sox annihilated the Cubs. I really need to get a scanner so you can appreciate my efforts at scoring the game. In some way, it wasn’t as tricky as I thought, because they were only planning to play 2 groups of players (they ended up with more; this is the game where Andres Blanco got hurt, and essentially lost his spot on the roster.) The Cubs give out lists of their extended roster, so figuring out who is who based on the number is too troubling; the trouble is figuring out who goes where in the batting order, or at least managing things until the new guys come up and you can verify their spots.

The last game never actually took place, but I had lots of photos of various warmups. I tried to get video of Starlin Castro taking batting practice (and special fungo fielding practice; he had one notable bad backhand try, and got a supportive lecture from Alan Trammell after.) The rain storm was the kind of rain storm where they’d probably try starting if this was a real game, and they did make an effort to dry things out as best as they could, but then suddenly gave up.

It did come down really hard shortly after they gave up on the game, but there are no long rain storms in Phoenix (expert knowledge of three days), and it was clear and drying up within an hour. Still got every game canceled.

Only baseball can get people to be so thrilled to see scrimmages. Basketball barnstorms into towns they don’t ever go, because the usual towns aren’t going to pay for 5 extra games that don’t matter. Football preseason is a plague. Baseball preseason is just inconsequential, but the locations and the timing make it feel much more like a rebirth (and much less like time killing.) I’m not sure if it’s something I’d want to do again, but that more of a personal thing (feels like I spend too much time on the irrelevant, or the barely relevant), but if you haven’t done it, I’d recommend it. It definitely feels like a vacation.

14 ?P Marshall – the position is another argument…
15 ?P Gorz – …and no one seems to have the first clue…
16 ?P Silva – …on even who’s leading here…

17 CA Hill
18 2B Baker

And I think that’s it, at least coming in. There’s three more who had/have hopes of being included

possible opening day Disabled List!

DL SP Ted Lilly – this one keeps bouncing back and forth like a metronome. Even best case, it makes since for him to start on the DL and get the extra warmup starts, since they may only need four starters anyway.

19 PH Xavier Nady – I don’t like the idea of an OF who can’t throw until June; doesn’t really work at most any position, but since the idea here was to platoon him with Fukudome, that’s not very helpful. I’d start him on the DL until he can at least do something, but Lou brushed off that idea.

DL RP Angel Guzman – :( At least he got one good season. I’ll be shocked to ever see him pitch in the ML again.

Up four grabs

That still leaves 6 spots, and four of those are in the bullpen. One of those jobs is already accounted for:

20 RP Esmalin Caridad – already know how this one plays out. He’s got a live arm, so Lou will be thrilled to give him a shot. He’s got a walking problem, so Lou will bury him deep in the pen. This is your anointed setup man!

I’ll get back to pitching in a couple spots, but the bench is easier to finish out

21 OF (who can back up all three) – this was clearly supposed to be Sam Fuld coming into the season, but he might have had it snaked from him. Tyler Colvin does not have the positionally flexibility (he’s really more of a corner guy) but has been killing the ball and has that 1st round draft pick tag. James Adduci has hit a little less, but still really good and offers more defense. Colvin’s thought of a prospect (though I doubt he’ll be much more than he is at this point), but Adduci isn’t really and it’s not as though the Cubs would be risking a great upside by having him sit on the bench 6 days out of 7. No idea how this is turning out.

22 ?? – This spot is supposed to be backup shortstop, which means it’d be Andres Blanco, but he’s been hurt a week. It was never going to be Starlin Castro…but now it seems like it actually may be some other position entirely.

Bringing in Chad Tracy and Kevin Millar on NRIs never made much since, because there really wasn’t going to be a spot for them on the 25. That math changes if Fontenot can actually play a little SS – there’s no need for the fourth guy, and there’s room for an extra 1B/3B type. (As I’ve pointed out too many times, this is why they shouldn’t have bothered to keep Fontenot, but he’s hitting good so I should lay off.) If this spot exists, it looks like it’s Millar over Tracy, with Hoffpauir and LeHair trailing far behind. I don’t know that any of them will actually hit when the calendar turns to April, but the bench could use one more hitter so it’s worth trying.

The thing is, Fontenot has played all of four innings of SS. Maybe he’s been putting in a lot of work on the back fields, or maybe that was enough for Lou, but I’m not so convinced this plan is actually happening.

And all of that was easier than the last three bullpen spots.

23 + 24 + 25 RP (or maybe starter?)

Gorz and Marshall probably won’t make the rotation, or at least won’t be there for long, so there’s no specific need for a LHP over a RHP. Past that? Who knows. Everyone left who’s pitched, minus those not on the 40 man roster, and those cut already

RHP M Parisi – Rule 5 pick, seemed to be here as a starter not at all (and definitely won’t be hid like Patton last year); has been good in short stints

RHP J Samardzija – coming in, the idea seemed to be start in ML or AAA with no chance of bullpen; does Guzman’s injury change that? Has been hit hard and not looked good.

LHP J Gaub – on the fringe of the bullpen coming in, has pitched good

RHP M Mateo – not this year and lit up

RHP J Stevens – probably had a spot at the start, but has been hit hard, who knows

RHP J Berg – like Guab, but with a win and a save

RHP B Parker – not this year and lit up

RHP B Schlitter – not the year and OK

If you based it on just Spring Training, which is both dumb and what will probably happen, it’s clearly Parisi, Guab and Berg as the last three, with Stevens and Samardzija on the perphiary. But there’s still plenty of innings to change things.

and so Chicago Cubs General Manager Jim Hendry is halfway done in undoing the bad moves by last year’s bad Cubs General Manger Jim…oh, right.

If the prospects ever turn into anything, that’d be neat and all, but this is really giving up Jake Fox to get Aaron Miles off his hand. And I guess THAT works if you subscribe to the beliefs the Cubs clearly do:

Aaron Miles had no future on this team and was just going to eat up a roster spot until they got up the nerve to cut him and eat the rest of the contract

Jake Fox had no future on this team because all the corner positions are taken and he’s not never going to be even an an OK defender anyway

I agree with the first point. The Cubs were clearly screwing with roster rules last year, sending Aaron Miles on as long as possible rehab stints, because they didn’t want him to take a spot on the 25 man roster. This saves the Cubs the spot in 2010, and it’s nice they can recoup $1.7 mil of a bad investment.

Can’t be emphasized enough – EVERYONE knew the Aaron Miles deal was bad the moment it was announced. The Bradley did was a dare, where you had people on both sides – those saying he’d hit, and those saying he’d crack. (I lost that one.) Miles had a disappointing season by his standards and will probably rebound, but having to do this deal to get rid of him is why it was a bad idea to give him two years in the first place.

Fox, I don’t buy into. The Cubs are going to be short on power unless Alfonso rebounds in a big way. Soriano may have entered the part of his career where he’s only going to miss 20-30 games every year. Plus, until the Cubs actually sign someone to be a centerfielder, they could’ve still played Kosuke there and Fox in right from time to time. I understand a price had to be paid to get Miles off the Cubs hands – and they got a pretty good price for him – but the team is definitely worse of now than it was before the trade.

If they can turn the saved money into something useful, maybe this can be redeemed a little bit. But I suspect it’ll go to a veteran reliever who’s actually not that good.

I was actually happier with this trade before I started considering it. Getting rid of Aaron Miles for not full price is great, but they shouldn’t have been in that spot to start with. At least this is done, and Hendry can spend next week finalizing his other mistake.

Pretty sure this trade is going to be thrown back in Hendry’s face should he be in any trouble next year. Fox will hit 20+ if given regular DH time and it’ll be really easy to spin this against him. He knows it, too, which is why he’s already trying to make the case that he wouldn’t have the same chances with the Cubs.

Jeff Gray is a fastball strikeout (though not impressive so) reliever who will compete with a half dozen other guys for a spot in the bullpen. The other guys seem to be such long shots, they’re not worth thinking about (except hoping later we’re all dumb for not thinking about them at the time.)

– 7 days and running dedicated to commentary on Sammy Sosa’s face without, I dunno, having someone find him and take another picture.

– Phil Rogers writing a column about how little budget room the Cubs have, then writing about how the Cubs must pick up Curtis Granderson’s 3/$24 salary ASAP.

This is why they are what they are. And by that, I mean the Cubs, who race into situations like that without thinking long term, and all the sudden you’ve got a slumping DH playing left field for 5 more years.

I’m mixed on Granderson. I think he had the fortune to sign a contract at the exact best moment for him, and someone is going to be stuck paying for that good year for the next three. If he was in some nice spot in between his really good 2008 and eh 2009, I think he’d a fine pick up, but there’s no guarantee. FanGraphs already has the Bill Jamies projections for next year, which tend to be a lot closer 2008, but my worry is another number on that page – 13% of his outs were on infield fly balls. Seems like a guy who was trying to hit for more power, and ending up too far underneath balls.

Maybe he can correct that in an easier park to hit. And the league adjustment will certainly help. Just not so certain that I want to give up the whole farm system.

He’s definitely a better idea than giving a multi-year deal to Marlon Byrd, which seems like the current rumor. You’d think the Cubs would learn not to take hitters from Texas. The 479 slugging is not going to work out well outside that park, and the 329 on base will. He’s already the wrong side of 30, and they’d be paying for decling years. A one year deal for a reasonable price might work, but Byrd’s the sort of fungible player you don’t sign long term, because you don’t want to be stuck with him if a better option comes along (or he suddenly becomes a worse option.)

I think Mike Cameron is every single team’s back up choice, so he’s going to end up getting a lot better deal than casual people expect. Maybe it’ll secretly be the year people pay for defense.

Kinda cool that the Burrell deal is the closest, having called it a while back. I stil think it’s the best the Cubs can do – they’re going to lose any deal they make for him, because they’ll be giving up the better player. You’ve just got pick the best bounce back candidate.

Roster note few have picked up on: Mike Fontenot being declared a Super Two player means he’s eligible for a big pay raise thru arbitration unless the Cubs non-tendered him. So, he’ll be cut, and the Cubs keep Aaron Miles around as a backup instead of eating his contract this year.